Loyola spokesman Nick Alexopulos said the diagnosis is pending laboratory confirmation but said that there likely wasn't a significant health risk to its community. School health officials are evaluating the student's roommates and other close contacts, Alexopulos said.

The last known case of meningitis on the Baltimore school's campus was last February, school officials said.

Bacterial meningitis is an infection of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord, the meninges. It is spread via direct close contact with an infected person's saliva, mucous or nose secretions. Its symptoms include high fever, vomiting and severe headache, those often associated with the flu.

Dr. Charles A. Haile, chief of the Division of Infectious Disease at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, said the infection can be fatal if untreated and can also lead to problems with hearing and intellectual capacity.

"In this situation, it is meningococcal meningitis, and it occurs particularly in populations where there are generally young adults and classically in areas of a large cluster of people, such as a college dorm or military barracks," Haile said. "Young people are particularly at risk. Older people usually have developed some kind of immunity to it. It is unusual for people over 30 to develop it."

When a particularly lethal outbreak of a never-before-seen virus began spreading around Saudi Arabia in 2012, a few researchers in Maryland and around the United States already had a jump on the investigation into its origins.

A program launched in 2011 by the state's largest health insurer to better coordinate patient care has slowed its overall pace of spending, avoiding millions in costs for the company and those it insures, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield reported Thursday.

An experimental Ebola vaccine tested on thousands of people in Guinea seems to work and might help shut down the waning epidemic in West Africa, according to interim results from a study published Friday.